What Makes a Man
by cdedg
Summary: Well I can hear my train comin' looks like time is not on my side, well I can hear my train comin' I'm still runnin' for my life. What makes a man pray, when he's about to die? I think I know, I think I might know. -"After all, everything was better than nothing."


**I think I might know**

He knew he was dead meat, getting rotter and rotter by the second. His mind had already tricked his senses into feeling nothing, but maybe that was what scared him so bloody much.

Nothingness. The black strips that surrounded the world. What if suddenly a thunder stroke and you felt absolutely nothing creep through your body, just the numbness, or maybe not even that; just nothing. Nothing at all. And you'd just lie there, motionless, staring at the sky with lifeless eyes. Eyes that once held a story, that once loved, that once fought, that once saw things and actually tried to stop them, because they felt something, and they saw pain, and love, and bravery, and darkness…just so much darkness.

But now they were dead. Dead sparkling orbs of liquid and other substances that made up the human eyes, but nothing beyond the biological facts, no soul, no actual indication that there was a living human being resting within the actual body. Just skeleton, and muscles, and tissues, and lungs, and skin…but yet again, nothing beyond the demeanour of a living thing. Simple posing, an act that could deceive billions into thinking him a human, even when he was not.

But how could someone call a human by biology, not really one since his insides were burning into ashes that left his body every time he respired? And not that he could avoid so, he needed oxygen to live anyway, even when the action itself was still destroying him rather slowly.

He stopped thinking about the nothingness that had suddenly surrounded him, eventually eating him alive, and instead just stared at the snowy grounds that lay still outside his window. He liked the snow, he realised. It was cold, but it still seemed so soft all at the same time. It was as if something so terribly lifeless seemed alive all at the same time, much like himself. Of course in his case it was entirely the opposite, for he appeared to be alive when he really was nothing more than entirely dead.

Still nothing made him relaxed as much as watching the snow fall daintily on the ground that surrounded his house, it was pure magic, even when he lived in a world that had no other way to do things rather than with a wand and a spell, and even when he did actually know how snow was made, he still found it to be the most magical piece to have ever existed. Damned be the logics that people often used to explain snow. How magical could it be to calm him, shallow and empty as one can be?

"YOU STUPID, LITTLE MUDBLOOD!" He heard from downstairs. His gaze dropped to the hard, wooden floor, but he did not move. He wanted to, because there was one thing that kept hid heart beating, as little as it may seem, maybe it had meant anything the last couple of months. And maybe he had wanted to change for a moment there, and maybe he had had planned it all when no one was watching, and maybe he was actually taking care of another human being that was not himself. Maybe, maybe, maybe. It was all a game of odd, and he had come up with the logical reasoning that if he decided to fight it, he might just as well committed himself to the sin of falling in love. To his eyes, it was wrong, it felt wrong, but it still warmed his heart and turned something inside of him that he thought could possibly dissolve forever. And yet it didn't dissolve, because he knew it was there, he had dwell over it day and night ever since their lips touch, ever so lightly, ever so accidentally, ever so gloriously. A mistake that should have made him realise he was supposed to turn away and quickly disappear from that life, to move away to another task. But his feet wouldn't move, he would stare at the door that lead to the bedroom of complete loss, and wouldn't move. He couldn't allow himself to. He wouldn't allow any of it…or so he wanted to believe. But what he brave enough? Was he strong enough? Was it even worth it? One thing he knew for sure, was that feeling this hurricane of thing was definitely better than feeling nothing. Because he had been in that hole for too long, and he knew how lonely it got and how it drove people to near insanity, and had it not been for her he would not know any better. But there was something better, something he still couldn't quite put his finger on, but there was a part of him that wanted to know _it. _Something told him he couldn't possibly leave this world without knowing it, experience it first hand.

But what if he was never meant to experience it? What if he was not worth loving? He had done terrible things, things he was amazed did not taunt him at nights were the wind blew too hard on his window and the furniture cracked loudly. He had not a single drop of remorse circling his body, he was proud even, because he got to be the best at something, he got to be trusted, he got to be appreciated for his own skills purely, and he got to be a part of something. Still, he probably shouldn't be proud of it, because he had ended lives, so many lives…

A sudden attack of images regarding his victims flashed before his eyes. His head started to ache badly, almost an impossible pain took over his entire body and he had absolutely no other option but to drop to his knees, reaching for his bed to steady his balance. Hopefully, the pain went away but his ears were ringing loudly from the high-pitched screams that took over the atmosphere. He closed his eyes, and winced in pain. And he waited for it to go away, he could have been used to it by now, to be penetrating screams that were now eternally imprinted on his memories, but every time he re-lived them he couldn't hold himself together, at least not when he was alone, because he was allow to be vulnerable when no one was watching.

Seconds merely passed, and the screams wouldn't leave him alone. And that was when he realised the screaming was not inside his head, that it was actually happening, in real life, and he froze right there where he was, because he knew to whom those screams belonged to. His mind began coming up with at least 5 different plans, and his heart starting racing at least twice its normal rhythm. He started sweating, unconsciously, and he suddenly took notice on the fact that he could be alive, that maybe he was not all dead inside. Could that be even possible? Could it? It didn't make the least of sense to him, and the sudden changes that were occurring inside him, it was like going through puberty all over again; with the raging hormones, the sudden mood swings, and the awkwardness of discovering a whole lot of things about your own self that you could have kept a secret for as long as it could be helped.

But this was different, quite possibly the biggest change he would take-if he ever decided to follow said change, that is. He kept measuring the possible consequences of his act, if he decided on doing it or not doing it, he took every possible scenario, and analysed it profusely, in deep detail.

After all, everything was better than nothing.


End file.
